The Home Secretary has placed Kingston town centre on a list of eight hot spots in London where police are targeting drink-fuelled violence at closing time.

It joins on the list places such as Croydon, Stratford, Camden and the West End, as well as nearby Sutton, despite violent crime figures dropping in the town centre from 922 last year to 664 this year.

The Safer Kingston Partnership, which includes the police and council, reacted with surprise to being named on the list.

Liberal Democrat Councillor Rolson Davies, responsible for health and adult community services, said: "My belief was that the figures were going down so I find it very surprising that Kingston has been identified."

But Conservative Councillor Ian George said: "I’m not surprised to be on the list at all.

"Any help is welcome but it is quite shameful we are on a list with these other boroughs."

The Kingston Conservative party is set to meet the new borough commander Martin Greenslade to urge him to put more police attention on tackling antisocial behaviour in the town centre.

Conservative leader Coun Howard Jones, an ex-policeman, said: "I have always been a proponent of a much stronger policing regime where this just wouldn’t be tolerated."

Some of the proposals announced this week, including knife arches and taxi marshalls, are already being used in Kingston.

According to Metropolitan Police figures for the Grove ward, which includes the town centre, there were 105 serious violent offences in the financial year to April 2009, and so far in the first three months of this financial year, another 20.

It was recently revealed that knife crime had risen across Kingston to 122 offences last year.

Ian Taylorson, chairman of Pubwatch, was not aware Kingston was a hotspot. He said: "Personally I don’t think Kingston is a dangerous place.

"Crime has reduced dramatically in the past three years but we do all we can."

Graham McNally, town centre manager, was also surprised to see Kingston on the list as Metropolitan Police official statistics showed a 20 per cent drop in violent crime in Grove in the past year.

The Surrey Comet revealed last year that police were called out to pubs and clubs in the town centre 680 times in six months with the area around Oceana responsible for 360 calls alone.

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